zlacker

>>pera+(OP)
Native Minnesotan here — living in Minneapolis — that has lived on both coasts:

With all that's happening the last few days, please don't generally associate Minnesotans with the violent riots that have captured the attention of everyone. The peacefulness of the protests and gatherings has been overshadowed by the violence. There are countless examples of Minnesotans standing up to those who choose to loot and destroy the innocent. Those images are being overlooked.

What happened is awful. These violent riots, and the violent images aren't reflective of Minnesotans at large. The violence doesn't reflect how genuinely upset people in Minnesota feel about what happened and greater the movement at large. There will always be edge-cases as there is with any situation in any context. But for everyone that I've known, for everyone I've met and encountered with in Minnesota, when I look back at my time spent on either coast I always have found the people in Minnesota to be most great.

I have friends and colleagues asking me "what's going on with everyone in Minnesota?" and I have to explain to them that these images aren't representative of the place I call home and my neighbors I call my friends.

There are businesses that didn't do anything wrong which have have been effectively `rm -rf` because of a small group of bad actors. The Target on Lake Street didn't do anything. Banadir Pharmacy didn't do anything. Seward Pharmacy didn't do anything. The pawn shop didn't do anything. The WIC office didn't do anything. The liquor stores didn't do anything. MoneyGram didn't do anything. The tobacco store didn't do anything. Disrupting those businesses and the livelihoods of their employees and owners doesn't prove a point.

But burning down the precinct? Yeah, I can get behind that.

>>joshmn+Db
The people rioting generally seem like decent people standing up for a just cause. So no, we won't judge all Minnesotans the same way. We will judge the people who set things up so that this is a common occurrence much more harshly. And that includes most Minnesotans. But don't worry. That includes most Americans. We'll judge them all for the shitty society they created where cops can beat and murder innocent people and get away with it. And we'll especially judge the cops, all of them, for murdering, stealing, assaulting, and supporting their fellow officers in the commission of such crimes. People are not innocent simply because they are nonviolent when they fully support the violence of police.